I must thank the brilliant legal tacticians of my home state for once again exposing us to the ridicule of those who know ARAGAWN is somewhere west of Ohio. I am sorry the letter was posted to scribd. I know this is a CC site I should want visit more, but the interface is so wretched I don't bother. Running documents in an embedded flash player in a little gun-slit window is a deal breaker. The response by Mr. Olson to legal bagels working on my dime however was pitch perfect.

"The Net perceives censorship as damage and routes around it."
E.F.F. co-founder John Gilmore

@#10 I must accept your rabidly pro-industry "your only right is to consume" stance as mere trolling in this forum but I do agree with you that this is a good thing.

It is good that a new wave of folks realize what a poor corporate citizen Mud Brick has been since its inception. I remember paying $500 per printer license fees for postscript when they started. Practical laser printing could not grow until HP engineered an alternative.

It is good that the truly innovative producers, i.e. the kids on You-tube, will develop newer and better tools to both create real entertainment and circumvent this silly lock-down of corporate "content".

It is good that to support these new innovators, You-tube will finally be forced to migrate to an open HD format that the audience wants.

It is good most of us on this forum understand the disingenuous absurdity of your statement "the market is the content producers and rights holders". My dictionary defines market as "An opportunity for selling or buying anything; demand, as shown by price offered or obtainable by barter." I fail to see the demand side in your equation.

So, yes it is a good thing, although perhaps a bit of a pain until the reroute is complete.

@ kinokino

Where is this jerry rig of which you speak? You mean taking the same cable I have use to get the signal from a BlueRay or HD-DVD and connecting it directly to my media PC which has graphics handling capability far exceeding the resolution of both the source and the monitor. This box is nothing more than a DRM DLL (or Binary Blob in Linux speak) in a physical form. So on top of having to cope with what it won't let me do with my own equipment, I have to find a place to store this brick. Those who want real HD-HTPC performance are a niche market, no matter what we would like to think. The most likely combo box will be the one from the cable company that will down-res their HD signal to analog for old sets. The cable companies will have control of these and since the only output is SD analog, there will be all sorts of connectivity options since you get nothing of theirs they consider worth stealing.

OUCH!

As a contemporary of Abbie, I took him at his word. The week "Steal This Book" came out I went to a bookstore and sat between the rows, read the book and left. A wonderfully chaotic mind!

I can't feel so positive about this film. Perhaps this is a bit of old fogey-ism but it really was a unique time and I question the people mentioned being able to bring that to the screen. Cohen is a frenetic comic who for all I know has the dramatic chops of Steven Segal. Spielberg hasn't seen a cliche he wouldn't throw at the screen. The only thing missing for a perfect trifecta is to tell me it is being written by a committee of twenty somethings with a great understanding of the background.

Thank you Xeni, you are absolutely spot on. I wrote a proposal for a subscription model for Internet distribution of serial programming such as TV in 2003. The silence of it's death was telling. If the writers and producers can overcome the calcified thinking of their industry, we on the Internet await their contribution unsullied by need to cater to advertisers or vulture capitalists.

Congratulations! Well deserved. I subscribed on Miro the day you started and it is one of my favorite podcasts.
Could you please post a mirror or screen capture since the link goes to the iTunes site that insists I install their Crappleware to view it.

Loved the first one! It was cleverly written and has piratically attractive characters. I've recommended it to friends. I'm glad there is a sequel. Another afternoon gone to good cause. Thank you, Cory.